Published on the day-after-birthday-reflection date of September 6, 2023
And though I sit in the same place I did just a few months ago, using the same bones and wearing familiar skin, I am already so different.
To say I have writers block is silly. For someone who is no means a professional writer, who does not make a living off this hobby, who does not possess any timeline to produce or publish (although I hope to someday). But for now, why put so much pressure on something that isn’t expected of me? I find the events that surround writer’s block are far more dreadful than the resulting lack of production.. the inability to express the cluster of busy feelings in the form I’m accustomed to serves as the real humdinger.
Seasonal transition, before met with a healthy mixture of calm and thrill has transformed into something of a chatterbox, unintelligible one at that. The discomfort and consequence of events I cannot transcribe, the weird jittery and unforgiving feeling in my heart that speeds up when I politely ask for it to slow. I just feel beaten up a bit. And typically, I feel like I am able to transform that beating into something poignant, or at the very least, legible. But now, that skill seems far beyond reach. So no, I guess I am not so plagued that I am not releasing content. I’m in the dumps about the words I seek burrowing themselves in the sand, out of sight. The cyclical force of writers block foreboding me of my own personal catharsis, halting me from finding any a-ha moment amidst the punches.
Maybe the pressure lies within trying to make sense of it all. The expectation of becoming a “more resilient” person when you manage footing after all the pitfalls.
I wish that I could find a glimmer of resiliency when I broke down and cried in physical therapy yesterday, unable to bear weight on my leg past a calculated benchmark, the therapist reminding me I ought to be patient with myself because I have many months before a full healing. But I can’t, instead I felt weak and defeated. Maybe there is some explanation to stomach problems that used to be shielded by jokes and funnies, but instead they seem to demand real attention and a lot of medicine. Maybe my car being totaled taught me the importance of auto insurance, but I really wish I could have read that somewhere in a pamphlet instead. Maybe my prolonged admittance of a work visa to move in Spain can teach me a lesson about real patience, but that well just feels so dry.
The funny thing about patience is that it offers no foresight. Patience, I’ve learned, is being calm and collected despite being deferred any absolutes and for-sures. It is not folding your hands atop your lap neatly, routinely crossing off boxes on the calendar until the red circled big event. There is no count down with patience. It is a playful little beast of a virtue that does not allow shortcuts. If you don’t play it’s game nicely, things feel heavier you see- limbs, eyelids, that unreachable pit in your chest. There comes a point where the faucet slows into a steady drip, where the nest that once held your ideas, your bright-sides, your optimism gets mangled and disheveled. Then inspiration becomes just a hopeful avenue. You have to play patience's game nicely. Its unrelenting that way.
Months later, I sit in the same wicker bench outside as I did before, but it isn’t the same. September kisses me hello and greets the deck with a gentle breezes that jingle the chimes and serve as reprieve from the unforgiving heat. The climate reminds me of my birthday last year around this time. I was in a cool, dry place then despite the temperature outside, with few pressures inside the cushiony sphere of college. But maybe this new sphere I enter, I must create the cushions myself. I must make it a cozy habitat that offers me more grace than I may distribute myself. A place where assurance is greater than exhaustion and silly posters of kittens hanging onto a tree branch with a ,“You got this!”, caption adorn the walls.
I sniffle and snort when I talk about it. Maybe I just feel beaten up. Maybe it sucks the most that there is indeed beauty in every corner of my life but I mope despite it. But I’ve come to learn I can be a masochist that way. The kind of masochist who schedules a Brazilian wax on their birthday.
That was one of my dumber ideas.
But I know that this little valley I seemingly sit in, isn’t so bad. It’s tiresome but it’s safe. It is mundane but it is temporary. I remember it is better to feel everything than nothing at all. Then I turn twenty-two. I go out. And I laugh with friends that pour into one another. We gorge on yummy food and drink and we hug, dance to live music, we share accessories and swap stories while making new ones all at once. Remarkably, I seem to forget how invigorated I become in the company of other humans. My parents treat me to a shmancy dinner and we leave and return from underneath the same roof, a type of circumstance I won’t get to have forever. The coffee vendor seems to pay me no mind, but strangely it’s just the comfort I seek. I realize I am doing all I can given what I have, resources both tangible and hidden. And I sink into the bench beneath the canopy of green that shades me a little deeper, and I remember the world does indeed revolve despite my undoing. Thank goodness for it’s consistency.
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